


Hands

by Orlaiths_Star



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Rebirth, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Tenderness, Touch-Starved, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 09:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20061616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orlaiths_Star/pseuds/Orlaiths_Star
Summary: "You. Old man."Merlin looked up and, in that moment, he found he could do nothing but stare. It was a bit jarring to realize such a thing, but the strangeness and discomfort of the thought as it dawned didn't make it any less of a truth. And that truth was this: after all this time, he'd stopped imagining what it would look like, the picture it would make.





	Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [arthur_pendragon's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_pendragon/pseuds/arthur_pendragon) lovely Merlin/Arthur Touch Fest.

"You. Old man."

Merlin looked up and, in that moment, he found he could do nothing but stare. It was a bit jarring to realize such a thing, but the strangeness and discomfort of the thought as it dawned didn't make it any less of a truth. And that truth was this: after all this time, he'd stopped imagining what it would look like, the picture it would make.

When he used to still dream of it, it had always unfolded in the midst of a shimmering light. Sometimes the light was ethereal, appearing soft and white; other times it was more natural. After a while, Merlin had preferred to only imagine the sunrise, it's warm brilliance glinting off blonde hair, setting individual strands aglow, sparking off wet armour, making metal he knew so well with the surface of his fingertips shine like liquid gold as a form rose, tall, strong, and regal, from the water's depths, with long purposeful strides carrying its figure to shore.

Carrying Him to shore. Carrying Him back to Merlin.

Merlin had known for lifetimes now; that dream and its countless variations were not meant to be, if they ever had been. And even though he knew, Merlin found himself standing by the lake. Some periods he stood unmoving, not caring for breath or for the flitting run of blood.

The lake filled and ran dry, and Merlin stood for no reason at all except that he had no reason not to. He stood through the change of seasons, through eras of man. He stood unseen, as he wanted to be, and in desperate times of pain that would at random and without reason strike him with as much force as when he'd had to watch the life in a pair of blue eyes simply evaporate, as when he'd had to sit there uselessly, dumbly, and shatter because he knew he could not follow--he'd let another engage, turn his head. Lead him away.

Those periods were true flickers in time. He always returned. It was the same no matter what he did, no matter the salve he applied, no matter the varied potions of time, distance, and distraction—magical or otherwise—that he concocted and consumed in madness.

He'd been ripped asunder that day. And in all the time since then, he had been doomed to circle back, again and again, like a bird tied by a string, to one intractable, stale, all-consuming fact—that standing as a shadow without a reason was easier, better, than enduring as a half for the very same.

It came, slowly, but it did come, this transformation to shadow. A boisterous laugh in the wrong tone had once been enough to send him reeling, to set him clawing at his bodily cage, as the vision of Him astride his steed, his head thrown back, came unbidden again to feast upon his mind, or what was left of it.

He'd looked at Merlin so brightly then.

Merlin remembered. He remembered vividly. That had never changed. He always saw Him as clearly as if He were set in a jewel of amber, perfectly preserved in time.

But that too was a falsehood, a fantasy in itself; He was not a jewel. He was not a thing Merlin could touch. None of the memories were, no matter how they persisted and beguiled, no matter how they dangled at the forefront of his mind, sparkling ever-bright with increased beauty.

And increased cruelty.

Merlin couldn't resist them.

They'd twisted the knife deeper, puncturing something vital in him each time he had reached out to hold—and he had reached. He had reached and reached. He never could stop.

How resilient he was.

It had been remarked upon more than once in those early days.

Yet no one had known the core of it. No one had known how deeply rooted it was, how tightly it clung. Nor could they have ever begun to suspect the scope of its ruthlessness. It had acted on him brutally and without mercy until, one day, it seemed as if there was nothing more of substance, of himself, for it to act upon, for him to bleed out, for him to grasp with at all.

And now, after all this time, what appeared before Merlin was but a specter not so unlike what he'd become—washed out, colorless, roughly defined, and staring at him without recognition. Still, it was something. It was more than he ever thought he would receive, and, somehow, despite his lifetimes of wasting, more than he ever thought he should.

As the form moved toward him, Merlin heard gasping. The sound was not of old lungs like his own, always expanding with a rattle and constricting with a wheeze when he had it in his mind to use them. The lungs he could hear now pumped like bellows, swift and efficient, gulping down deep pockets of air.

Merlin heard them, and with each breath the lungs took, he himself felt closer to drowning. A heart pumped blood, great whooshing gushes of it. The pounding of each beat was like a rabid animal slamming itself bodily against the walls of his sternum. It strained, clawed, and bit; it felt to be splintering bone and ripping muscle with strength lent to it by a swelling madness. A new madness. A different kind. Merlin knew not from where it had come after all this time, he only knew that it was excruciating, and he felt that this beast—not his own, surely—his own had not been alive for centuries—would soon succeed, and burst from the husk of a body that moored him to the lakeside.

Perhaps his soul would follow after it, then.

Perhaps, then, this was the beating of the drum that would set him free. Perhaps it was the last frenzied, desperate push, the last crazed struggle of the remaining bit of life he'd failed to notice before it was finally snuffed out.

The final act.

"Merlin?"

Merlin heard whimpers. They were the pained whimpers of a youth.

"Merlin, Merlin--"

What a strange thing it was—to hear the sound of that voice, even thin and diluted as it now was, saying his name again.

He'd not let hands touch him in almost just as long as that. Almost. It had taken hundreds of years to accept that whatever hands might want to, whether out of base comfort or friendship, would never be the ones he hurt without, and so the weight of any other pair upon his skin had only served to hurt him all the more.

And yet, he realized, there were hands touching him now.

The hands were transparent—Merlin could see his own raggedy clothes through the grip they had obtained on his arms—but their touch, somehow, was deeply felt. Merlin fell to his knees and the hands followed him. Their grip was hard, cold, and wet.

"Look at me, Merlin, Merlin--"

They were a bit like the chains he had imagined so long ago, the ones he'd felt he should have been bound in, and then tossed into the deepest pit for all the ways in which he had failed. So many failures, ever-growing, and exponentially so, with each passing year the Once and Future King did not return.

Life wriggled, groaned, and the horror and guilt of what Merlin had done hit him like a wave.

"Oh gods, I'm sorry, I’m so sorry, Arthur--"

He was apologizing to a ghost long past, and Merlin knew that. But it was the only ghost he'd longed to see, to make peace with before the end, and it was evident now the time was upon him. Destiny, though affronted, was bound too, and it had granted him his last wish with a vindictive, killing joy.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

Merlin had decided he would use what he'd been given until the last grain of sand fell. So he let the madness sweep him, and he took hold of it in turn. He used it. He babbled, moaned, and cried with it, and he did so with a youth's voice, a youth's lungs, and a lion's beating heart for what he knew was the final time.

"Shh, Merlin, Merlin, please--"

He had to, with every breath left in him. There was simply no other course. He would make known his guilt, his sorrow, his devotion, his love that had not died, his love that would _never_ die, even after he was gone--

"No, no, stop saying that, you're not doing that, you're not doing that, don't you dare do that, do you understand me?"

Merlin stared. His eyes blinked. They kept blinking, and Merlin realized with each new instance they were allowed to see that the form before him looked more and more substantial.

There was a fortifying huff of breath, shaky and momentous. And then He spoke again with a voice that once more ceased Merlin's thoughts, for how close it was, how strong and steady.

"I've just got here and now you want to leave? Even you must realize that would be the most insolent thing you've ever done."

The hands were rubbing his arms gently now, up and down, up and down. The hands were solid, warm. Fully formed.

“There now. See? You’re not going anywhere.”

Merlin began to shake. It was a full-bodied movement the likes of which had not come over him in a time he could remember, from before or since.

"Merlin..?"

Merlin didn't know now if his body was telling him to stay or go, if it was trying to shake him out of its skin, or if it was simply saying hello, now once more alive.

"Alright. Now you’re scaring me. I know you’re in there. Say something, or I shall suspect you’ve been ensorcelled." Arthur smiled crookedly back at him, uncertain, with sadness and humour, with love and hope.

"Arthur, you're... are you really here.." Merlin reached up to touch his beloved's face, stopped when he saw the fingers he directed were youthful and strong. Arthur's beautifully calloused ones grabbed them, held them in place as a cheek pressed into his palm, and then a nose, rubbing back and forth. A quivering exhale ghosted over his wrist, then a laugh. It raced over his icy skin like warm candle flame, and drops of burning water slid down Merlin's face, blurring his vision and drawing hot tracks over his cheeks, nose, and lips.

A thumb touched beneath his lashes, trembled, and then wiped away until Merlin could see Arthur's eyes, the very same as they were before, so striking and clear and vividly blue, and taking in everything that he was. Only, they were emanating a light now, a light brighter and warmer than any sunrise he’d pictured for this day, a light just for him.

"I am."

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the song ['Potions'](https://youtu.be/JB9yk11SHPs) by Puscifer. Anywho, thanks for reading! Any comments/kudos would be very much appreciated.


End file.
